What the World Eats and Owns: Eye Opening Books

I have just finished reading two fascinating books by Peter Menzel. The first one called What the World Eats has large photos of individual families around the world posing with a weeks worth of groceries laid out around them. The book tells a little about each family and includes information about the cost and quantity of food they eat each week. It was so interesting to see the differences and similarities in what different families around the world eat compared to our own family. I like to cook a number of international dishes so our diet was a mix of many of the families profiled and not so much like the average American family.

The second book called Material World: A Global Family Portrait has large photos of families from around the world surrounded by all of their possessions. According to the Amazon book review "Photographers spent one week living with a "statistically average" family in each country, learning about their work, their attitudes toward their possessions, and their hopes for the future. Then a "big picture" shot of the family was taken outside the dwelling, surrounded by all their (many or few) material goods." Reading these two books was the next best thing to taking a trip around the world. Jacob and Rosa really enjoyed looking at the photos in each of these books and it was very eye opening to see the difference in possessions and diet among the families profiled. I highly recommend these two books for both parents and children!